Hannah Frances’s show review

Hannah Frances bares all and charms the crowd at an intimate music venue, The Green Note, on 27.08.2025.

Hannah Frances is this decade’s prog-folk artist to be reckoned with. Vermont-based by way of Chicago, she has been releasing music since 2018, touring with the likes of Folk icons Robin Pecknold of Fleet Foxes, Florist, Hurray for the Riff Raff, and Billie Marten. She’s embarking on her UK tour this August, gracing stages such as Green Man Festival and The Lexington in London, and is opening for Florist this September on their European Tour.

Keeper of the Shepherd, France’s second album, is my favourite album of the year (yes, I’ve already made my mind up, even though we have 4 months left). While I haven’t yet experienced the full band performance live, I knew I would do almost anything to catch Hannah playing live, whatever her setup.

I made my way to the show from the depths of Heathrow Airport earlier that day, committed to attending the show despite having been up since 5 am, travelling back from Salzburg. Entering Green Note, Frances and the opener of the show, Talk Bazaar, sit in the corner window – the remnants of their dinner situated between the two musicians. We chat briefly, Frances joking that my name is a Venn diagram of both their names, while I introduce myself to the pair.

Talk Bazaar is the moniker of Alex DeSimine, a multi-instrumentalist based out of New York who has been accompanying Hannah on the UK leg of the tour. The first song of their set, ‘ICOULDBLINDYOU’, immediately takes me back to my childhood, listening to Fleet Foxes with my dad on Sunday afternoons, driving around the suburbs of London.

Alex’s vocals are uncannily reminiscent of the previously mentioned Robin Pecknold; warm and powerful, with a soulful grit in the higher register. They are skillfully paired with simple guitar accompaniment, played with the ease of someone who knows their way around a fretboard. They follow the opening track with a series of shorter songs. Bazaar has a great rapport with the crowd, seeming incredibly at ease on a stage. Their second song is a tidy 1 minute and 5 seconds long, called ‘You Know I’ll Love You to the End of Time’. Bazaar jokes that ‘that’s almost as long as the song itself. ’ Followed up by ‘Abode’, a jazzier track on the guitar, reminding me of Nick Hakim’s debut album Green Twins, the audience begins to grasp the intricacies and talent of Bazaar as a songwriter and instrumentalist. Bazaar introduces their next track ‘a friendly check-in’, written about a decade-long relationship coming to an end, coming to the realisation they were not as well as they thought they were. Giggles from Frances in the audience at the opening line, “It was a friendly check-in, but I was listening to a sad song,” highlight the friendship between the two artists and explain probably why Frances trusts Bazaar to perform on stage with her. The set concludes with two more tracks, ‘such a sunday’ introduced as a breakup song that isn’t really a break-up song, but rather a ‘we made it’ song, and ‘formless cluster’, which is the breakup song we are all expecting, both found on Bazaar’s 2021 album oceanic. Bazaar is graced with the attentive audience they were promised at the beginning of the set, deserving the silence and watchful eyes trained on them for their 20 minutes of music

Frances hops onto the stage with Elanor Moss’ borrowed guitar shortly after Bazaar’s set is complete, spending about 5 minutes tuning the guitar in her signature open tuning. She promises the audience that while Elanor has been taken ill and will not be there to interview her, the audience will still get the chance to ask their burning questions on tracks, her thoughts on the UK, and anything else they might want to know. She opens her set with ‘Bronwyn,’ the first song on her album Keeper of the Shepherd, which she spent almost a year perfecting on the guitar. It is played with nearly effortless ease, even on an unfamiliar guitar, and despite picking up the guitar at 18, she displays virtuosic fingerpicking akin to one of her named inspirations, Nick Drake, an idol of many folk-based musicians. The light reverb and mixing applied to her vocals is the perfect addition, and Frances’ vocals sound no different from the tracks I had been listening to for the last seven months.

Frances’ music isn’t easy lyrically or sonically. Her lyrics are complex in nature and perfectly accompany her dizzying guitar parts; yet her words remain truthful, brutally honest, and blunt. Her second song, ‘Keeper of the Shepherd’, focuses on loss, grief, and the self. It is sung and played with as much flawlessness as her opening track. ‘I hold to my father’s heart / Dying in my arms / I died too, I died too / I lost you, I lost me within you’. Frances refuses to hide the bitter truth behind clever metaphors and lays the open wound of losing her father bare for her audience. Her third track ‘Oranges’ requested by what I’ve observed to be her biggest fans this side of the Atlantic (myself included) is from her 2021 album Bedrock, an album ‘offering rawness with reverence’. ‘Falling from and Further’, another requested track, juxtaposes her previous song, written years apart from each other. Frances’ relational fears are deftly presented within the song, and her vulnerability woven through her tracks once again shines through.

Frances breaks for the Q&A portion of the evening, the first question from yours truly asking for the inspiration behind her new album ‘Nested in Tangles’. Frances lets out a panicked ‘oh’, followed by ‘I should probably learn how to answer that question’. She wrote most of the album in October of 2023 before ‘Keeper of the Shepheard’ came out – collaborating again with producer Kevin Copeland. Frances states that she writes her tracks in order, often in quick succession, and images of an open faucet come to mind as she explains this process. You wouldn’t guess that tracks like hers could be written that quickly. Still, she lets us know that most of the instrumentation is later fleshed out alongside Kevin in the studio, and often allows the instrumentalists she works with to figure out their own parts during the recording process. ‘Nested in Tangles’ is inspired by old family ruptures dredged up that have always been there in the periphery. Her album cover features tree limbs enveloping her birdlike figure as she reaches towards the light, trying to find a pathway through the entanglement of this present rift. Questions flow for the next 40 minutes, the audience deeply dissecting Frances’ creative process behind her albums before the music starts again. We rejoin with ‘Floodplain’, a vocally haunting song about losing oneself in a relationship while grieving, which is once again executed effortlessly, just like the recording. ‘Steady in the Hand’ follows, a new track off her upcoming album; ‘I want to give the best of me to you’ rings out, the gentle optimism details the growth that Frances has journeyed through from her previous albums.

Frances finishes the set with the song I requested upon first meeting her, ‘Husk’, a song fully acquainted with death. Some of my favourite topics for songs, as both a listener and songwriter, dance around the subject of death and endings, so it’s no shock to me that I became so obsessed with the track on first listen. Frances introduces the track as ‘the heavy one,’ which is not an exaggeration, and envelopes the audience in tragedy for a total of 5 minutes. By the end of the track, there is a wetness in her eyes as she turns to look at Talk Bazaar, who shares that same glisten off to the left of the stage.

Hannah Frances’ set list

Bronwyn

Keeper of the Shepheard

Oranges

Falling from and Further

Floodplain

Steady in the Hand

Husk

Photos by @framesbyfrances